Out Of The Shadows
by Caz Malfoy
Summary: There's something lurking in the shadows, right in Torchwood's own backyard...
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Out Of The Shadows  
**Chapter: **1/?  
**Pairing: **Eventual Owen/Ianto  
**Summary: **There's something lurking in the shadows, right in Torchwood's own backyard...  
**Timeline: **Set after Jack returns in season 2 - but no spoilers. There will be spoilers for Cyberwoman and Combat.

x

While he had been in the RAF, Jack had loved the feeling flying gave him. The buzz he got from the knowledge there was nothing beneath him to stop him from falling to a grizzly death was something he hadn't managed to match so far in his long life. He often found himself wishing he still had his plane so he could experience it again.

Hanging from the roof of a twenty-storey building, Jack scowled and tried to tighten his grip on the ledge above him. He was beginning to realise what people meant when they said 'beware what you wish for'. Looking at the drop below him was enough to turn his stomach and hope there was someone on the roof to pull him up.

He closed his eyes and tried to find somewhere to place his feet; unfortunately the building he was pressed against the side of was smooth-faced and he had no choice but to let himself hang and ignore the burning sensation that was spreading through his shoulders.

Jack groaned with pain when he felt whoever was on the roof stand on his fingers. He automatically flung his arm out, moving it away from the building in an effort to protect his bruised fingers from more assault. Unfortunately this meant all his weight was now being held up by one arm and he could feel the burning increase.

Throughout the whole fight he had somehow managed to keep hold of his gun, even as he hung from the building, he had retained his grip on the weapon, despite it making supporting his weight even harder.

Now his arm was hanging at his side and he could feel the revolver slowly sliding out of his hands. His fingers were stinging from the kick and when he found he couldn't close his fist, he knew that at least one finger was broken.

With a sigh, he watched as the gun fell from his grasp, slicing through the air before landing on a skip below him. He had been using that gun for decades and he had never lost it before; he would have to find a way to locate it again.

A muffled gunshot sounded on the roof above him and seconds later Owen's bloodied face came into view over the top of the building.

"How you hanging?" he smirked down at his boss, setting his gun to the side and grabbing Jack's arm.

"Not… funny…" the older man ground out through gritted teeth as he focused on getting back on to the roof before he met an untimely end with the ground. He knew the fall couldn't kill him for long, but it would hurt like hell and he had no intention of putting himself through that much pain unless it was needed.

It took ten whole minutes, but eventually Owen managed to pull Jack up and they both fell back against the tarmac, exhausted from the effort and panting for breath.

"I think you need to go on a diet," Owen muttered, pushing himself up onto his elbows and taking a deep breath in.

Jack scowled and got to his feet. "Or you need to work out more. You've no muscles."

He held his good hand out and helped Owen to his feet, before looking around the roof and the alien they had been hunting. "Did you have to kill it?" Jack sighed, crossing the roof and prodding the alien with the toe of his boot.

"It threw you off the room," Owen pointed out, grabbing his bag from where he had dropped it and following Jack. "Are you saying I should have left you hanging there?"

The alien looked like very few others Jack had seen. For one thing, it looked completely human. Although he had seen being's with human like features and traits, or ones that wore a human skin. This one looked to be completely human.

"That explains why Tosh couldn't pinpoint an exact location or determine a planet of origin." He crouched down next to the body while Owen unzipped his bag and withdrew a hand-held biometrics scanner. "He looks like every other human being in Cardiff."

"Except for the inhuman strength, right?" Owen muttered, running the scanner over the dead corpse's face. "Everything is reading as normal," the doctor decided, lowering the scanner and switching the machine off. "I'll need to open him up when we get back to the Hub."

Footsteps sounded on the roof behind them and they looked up to see Ianto standing behind them, his long coat buttoned up tightly against the cold wind that swirled around them. Jack shivered and pulled his own coat closer, only just feeling the chill as the adrenaline wore off.

"Perfect timing," Jack grinned, getting to his feet and brushing dirt off of his knees. "I hope there's a body bag in the SUV."

Ianto nodded his head. "Of course, I've taken to keeping several in there at all times. We seem to be needing them more and more recently."

"Isn't that the truth," Owen muttered, zipping his bag up and getting to his feet as well.

Jack looked down when Ianto held his hands out. Cradled in the Welshman's palms was Jack's fallen Webley. "How did you…"

The younger man offered him a small smile. "I saw it fall. I thought you might want it back."

He grinned gratefully and holstered the weapon, glad it didn't seem to be broken. Between the three of them, they managed to half-drag, half-carry the corpse down the stairs to the waiting SUV at the entrance to the building.

x

Jack grimaced and flexed his fingers, wincing at the bolt of pain that shot through his hand. Owen had X-rayed him and declared that the middle and ring fingers on his right hand were broken. The doctor had strapped the fingers together to help them mend.

It would take at least a week before he could move them without it hurting and he hated that and another couple after that before they were completely healed. What was the point in being unable to die, when a superficial wound could render him useless for weeks?

Ianto placed a glass of water in front of him, along with two painkillers. Jack raised an eyebrow at the other man and Ianto shrugged his shoulders. "I know you don't like taking drugs, but I broke my fingers at Canary Wharf and know how much it hurts."

Jack smiled at Ianto's concern and placed one of the tablets between his teeth. One large gulp of water later and the tablet had disappeared down his throat, barely touching his tongue much to his relief – he couldn't stand the taste.

"If the pain gets worse, I'll take the other," he assured him, setting the second tablet next to his lamp. "Come on, let's go see what Owen's got."

The alien was lying on the autopsy table, a small white sheet covering its lower body, leaving its torso bare so Owen could cut him open.

"What have you got, Doc?" Jack called, entering the medical room with Ianto behind him.

Owen glared at him for a second before returning his attention back to the body where he was finishing stitching him up. "We were right, this guy is almost completely human. Well, except for the fangs…" he pulled back the dead man's upper lip, revealing abnormally long canines. "They're way too long to a human's."

"Vampire?" Ianto frowned.

Jack shook his head, leaning on the railing in front of him. "No such thing."

"I've been calling him Lestat." Ianto rolled his eyes and shook his head, while Jack just looked at him blankly. "Never mind," the doctor grabbed a vial of blood and a clipboard. He handed the clipboard to Jack and made his way back into the main Hub. "Those are 'Le Stats' on Lestat."

"I get the point," Jack growled, flicking through the pieces of paper in front of him. "Nothing in here tells us anything we don't already know."

Owen shook the vial of blood. "That's why I hoping this will tell us something, otherwise it'll be back to square one."

The large cog door rolled open, revealing Gwen and Tosh on the other side. Between them was a young woman, Gwen was holding one arm and Tosh was holding the other. Her lips were drawn back and she was baring her fanged teeth.

"Jack, we've got a problem!"

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Out Of The Shadows  
**Chapter: **2/?  
**Fandom: **Torchwood  
**Pairing: **Eventual Owen/Ianto  
**Rating: **FRAO  
**Summary: **There's something lurking in the shadows, right in Torchwood's own backyard...  
**Timeline: **Set after Jack returns in season 2 - but no spoilers. There will be spoilers for Cyberwoman and Combat.

x

She was cold. Freezing, actually. She shivered violently and tried to pull her duvet over her. Her forehead crinkled in confusion when she realised that she couldn't find the quilt. With a groan she slowly opened her eyes an inch. She wasn't in her bedroom; in fact she wasn't in a bedroom at all. She was in a cell.

Her eyes flew open completely and she jumped to her feet, frantically looking around her for an escape route.

"Oh good, you're awake," a strange voice spoke from beyond the glass walls of her cell.

She quickly turned to see a tall man standing on the other side of the glass. His arms were folded across his chest and his face was half-hidden in shadow. "What's going on?" she demanded, trying to keep her voice from quivering. "How did I get here? Why can't I remember?"

The man clucked his tongue and shook his head. "You've been drugged; it'll stay in your system for several more hours before they'll give you another dose. As to how you got here…" he took a small step forward, still too far into the dark for her to see him clearly. "You were hunting last night and were stupid enough to get yourself caught."

A look of panic crossed her face for a second, before she glared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't hunting last night. I've done nothing wrong; you can't keep me here."

"But I'm not keeping you here…" He nodded in the direction of the door. "They are… Torchwood: That's what they do, track down aliens like us and dissect them. I reckon that's what they'll do with you… if you're lucky."

The girl moved closer to the glass, trying to see more of the man's face in the dim light. "Wait, 'aliens like us'?"

He smirked and rested a hand lightly on the glass. "You'll find that I know more about than your kind that most people." He grinned as his canine teeth lengthened and he stepped fully into the light, allowing her to see him properly.

When she saw his features she let out a gasp of horror and jumped back from the glass. "I…" She fell to her knees, shaking like a leaf in the wind. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realise you were here."

The man paced in front of her cell. "Of course, you didn't. No doubt you would have stayed well hidden if you had known. Instead of drawing Torchwood's attention to our presence on this planet."

"Sir…" She shook her head violently. "I… I didn't know. I'm sorry. Please…"

She had heard stories of the warrior's mercilessness. He had slain many of her kind, leaving their broken and bloody bodies in his wake as he passed through towns and villages. Now that they were on a strange planet, she knew he wouldn't be lenient in administering punishment.

The man seemed to be able to read her thoughts and he smirked, his fangs making him seem even more sinister in the dark light. He pressed several buttons on a keypad and the door opened ever so slightly, allowing him to enter the cell.

"I see my reputation precedes me," he whispered, watching as she backed into a corner. He ran sure fingers down her trembling cheek and leant down to whisper in her ear. "Don't worry," he murmured. "It'll only hurt for a moment."

The sound of her neck breaking seemed to echo of the damp cell walls.

x

Owen grinned and accepted the cup of coffee Ianto was offering before he smelt the steaming liquid cautiously. "You haven't laced this with anything have you?" he asked, looking at Ianto out of the corner of his eye.

"Why would I ruin a cup of my perfect coffee like that?" Ianto replied, not looking up as he continued distributing various cups to the other members of the team.

Tosh smiled and accepted her own drink gratefully. "Because you swore you would when you realised Owen had been giving your special coffee to Janet."

The doctor let out a growl of annoyance before his eyes widened and he shrank away from Ianto's steel gaze. "You knew about that? How is that possible?"

Ianto nodded and headed towards Jack's office. "Have you seen what coffee does to weevils?"

He enjoyed the look of absolute disgust on Owen's face for a long moment before he ducked into the Captain's office.

The Japanese woman lifted an eyebrow at Owen who leant over and poured his drink into a nearby alien plant-pot. "What?" he asked defensively when he saw her looking at him. "I don't trust him."

She just rolled her eyes and grabbed her PDA as she got to her feet. "I'm going to check on the girl downstairs," she informed him.

Owen jumped up and grabbed his medical kit. "I'll come with you," he said, hurriedly following her down the stairs. "I need to do some more tests." She looked at him in disbelief. "And I don't want to be around when Ianto realises what I've done with this cup of his precious coffee."

x

Jack bit his lip in thought as he flicked the pages of the thick tome in front of him. It wasn't often he had to dig out his encyclopaedia of alien species, but the dead body in their autopsy bay and the young girl in their cells had stumped him completely.

He had never seen anything like them before. Ianto hadn't been far off when he guessed they were vampires; even though Jack knew no such thing existed, it was the closest word he could think of to describe the creatures.

Speaking of Ianto, Jack looked up to see the younger man entering his office, an empty tray in one hand and a full cup in the other. "I thought you might need this," he said softly, placing the hot cup in Jack's hand, careful of his broken fingers.

Jack grinned and took a slow drink from the steaming liquid. "Ah," he sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Have you I ever told you how much I love you and your coffee skills, Ianto?"

Ianto offered him an indulgent smile, too used to Jack's flirting to bother telling him off for it. "Only every day, sir."

"Well, it's the truth," Jack insisted. "Some people would kill to be…"

"Jack," Tosh's voice interrupted him from the intercom, "we've got another problem."

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Out Of The Shadows  
**Chapter: **3/?  
**Pairing: **Eventual Owen/Ianto  
**Timeline: **Set after Jack returns in season 2 - but no spoilers. There will be spoilers for Cyberwoman and Combat.

x

The young girl's body was slumped in the corner of the small cell. Her neck was twisted almost completely around. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream as her eyes stared lifelessly at the wall.

"What the Hell is happening, here?" Jack demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

Owen was crouched next to the girl, his medical kit sitting open on the floor next to him. His gloved hands gently prodded her neck, feeling each broken bone. "Almost every bone in her neck is broken," the doctor muttered, getting to his feet and yanking off the latex gloves.

"_Jack_," Gwen's voice spoke through the blue-tooth ear piece the Captain was wearing.

With an audible sigh, Jack activated the ear piece so Gwen could hear his words. "Yeah."

"_I've checked the CCTV like you asked._"

Jack pressed her for more information and then frowned when she responded, "_The cameras down in the cells were deactivated almost twenty minutes before Owen and Tosh found the body._"

Owen activated his own ear piece as he helped Jack lay the girl's broken body flat so they could put her into a body bag to be moved to the autopsy bay. "How is that even possible?" he demanded.

Their eyes turned to the camera positioned in the top corner of the cell. It was trained on them and the small red light was flickering steadily, indicating that they were being recorded.

"_Whoever broke in entered the hallway and slipped into a blind-spot to shut the camera down. There might be a small glimpse of them in the seconds before it goes black but it's too dark and grainy to make out._"

"Tosh?" Jack asked, looking at the Japanese woman who was surveying the cell with what could easily be mistaken as a PDA.

She nodded and slipped the scanner into her pocket. "I can run it through some programs and algorithms to see if I can make it clearer. But it'll take a few hours."

Jack reached down to his side and unfastened the holstered at his hip, pulling out his Webley revolver. "Do it," he instructed, nodded his head curtly.

In the blink of an eye Tosh had disappeared up the stairs and into the main Hub where her beloved computers were.

"Gwen, activate total shut down. We've been breached."

"_Jack, are you sure? I mean…"_

"We've been breached, Gwen," Jack replied tensely. "Whatever's going on here has got something to do with these two creatures and whoever's doing it is obviously strong. We can't risk whatever this is escaping into the city. Hopefully we're not too late and it's still in here somewhere."

Jack nodded to Owen, indicating for him to follow. "Ianto," he addressed the Welshman who was waiting outside the cell for instructions. "You, me and Owen are going to search the archives and lower levels. There a lot of places for this thing to hide, so be careful and keep comms open at all times."

The trio split up when they reached the archives; Jack taking the left, Owen the right and Ianto the centre.

x

The ceilings were low and filled with cobwebs. As he moved through the shelves, Jack had to duck several times to avoid getting a hair full of cobwebs. A shudder ran down his spine as he thought about the spiders that could be sitting above his head, waiting to drop down the back of his neck.

It was dark, so dark he could barely see in the thin beam of light emitting from his torch. There was a smell of musty dampness in the air and he had to fight back the urge to sneeze and cough violently when his shoulder disturbed a large box on his right, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

Jack hadn't realised how many files Torchwood Three had accumulated since it's inception in the late 1800's. He had been slowly making his way through the various shelves and small storage rooms and a glance at his watch told him they had been down there for almost three hours.

He tapped his ear piece and spoke quietly, purposely keeping his voice down in case their intruder was around the next corner, as unlikely as he knew that was going to be. "Any sign of our guy?"

Owen's voice replied almost immediately. He sounded completely worn and very irritated at being stuck in the archives. "There's nothing here, Jack. There's no sign that anyone's been down here since the fifties. I can't believe how much bloody dust there is!" He added a sneeze on the end to prove his point.

"Ianto, what about you?" The line remained silent and Jack frowned deeply. "Ianto, you still with us?"

It was a long moment before a voice sounded in his ear. "Yeah, I'm here." Jack couldn't help notice how tight Ianto's voice appeared to be, but shrugged it off. They were all tense, knowing someone else was in the Hub and not being able to find them. "There's no sign of anything here either."

Jack let out a long sigh, his breath blowing the cobwebs for a moment before they stilled once more. "Okay, stay at it," he instructed, deactivating his ear piece.

After searching three more rows and finding nothing, Jack jumped and nearly shot at nothing when he felt his mobile phone vibrate and ring in his pocket. "Tosh? What are you doing ringing me?" he demanded, answering the call and putting the phone to his ear.

"Jack," Tosh's voice sounded even more strained than her Welsh colleague's. "Where are you?"

"What do you mean, where am I?" Jack growled, still scanning his surroundings with his torch. "I'm in the archives. The same place I've been for the past three hours."

"What about the others? Owen and Ianto?" she pushed, her voice moving up a level of urgency.

"They're here too. Tosh, what the hell is wrong? Tell me, now!"

"The computer has just finished running the algorithms on the CCTV image. We've got a face."

Jack smiled slightly with relief; at least they now knew something that would help them. "Then what's the problem?"

"That thing in the cell… the thing that killed that girl…" Tosh took a shuddering breath in before continuing. "Oh, God… It's Ianto, Jack."

TBC


End file.
